Bus Route Number Nine
by M-Maltesers
Summary: Ootori Choutarou's regular bus home is number nine. So is Shishido's. AU.


**Bus Route Number Nine**

By Miki**  
**

There are days when Choutarou thinks it might be nice to be a kid again. Days when he stares out the window of the bus at the buildings going past and remembers he's done it time and time again in the past.

As a child, sitting on his mother's lap.

As a kid being dragged off to his first day of school, tears in the corners of his eyes because though he's still too young to understand watches and clocks and hours and minutes, he still understands a day is a long time to be without his mum.

As a middle schooler, standing up to give another passenger a seat and being kicked by his girlfriend for it, even if she manages to flash a smile later and tell him she really isn't annoyed.

As a teenager, standing up and hanging onto the hand-holds as the bus veers around corners and he tries not to stare down the shirts of the girls sitting in front of him, tries to pretend he can't hear his friends whispering at him and sticking their elbows into his ribs. 'Hey, Choutarou! Check out that one! Look at those tits!'

Once upon a time, he used to see one of his teachers sitting in the back row of the bus; someone who always focused his attention on his book and yet still managed to root a sense of terror into half the guys on the bus because they believed he had four sets of eyes and eight hands to grab them with. 'Don't let Aoi-sensei catch you!' they'd whisper, taking turns to tease the girls they liked by pulling on their braids or snatching away their glasses and hiding them behind their backs.

Choutarou's regular bus route is number nine.

Catching it after the end of each working day, it still takes him past his old high school, even if his home has now moved and he no longer gets on and off at this stop every day. His start and finish points are different, but the route in between has remained unchanged. But it isn't the group of boys in uniform who get on at this stop who interest him.

They're all immature enough for their ages; still making loud jokes which turn Choutarou's ears red when he hears them by accident, and still letting their hands stray, only snatching them back when their victims turn to see who's pulled on their hair or blown hot breath across their necks.

Maybe all boys schools are always a little like that, Choutarou muses, though he also notes the absence of any teacher, and wonders why they still haven't thought to actually assign the duty to someone.

His own teacher had only ever caught the bus because it was more convenient than a car, and now he finds himself doing the same thing, he wonders if Aoi-sensei never felt a bit uncomfortable about it.

Occasionally one or two of his students take the bus with him and sit up the back. 'Ootori-sensei? Is this seat free?' 'Ootori-sensei? Is it okay if I sit with you?' 'Ootori-sensei? How come you don't drive?'

But mostly he's by himself, and more often than not, there's a spare seat next to him. Probably because half the bus is full of high school boys and high school girls, and no matter which way Choutarou looks at it, it's probably infinitely more appealing to stand up next to a girl with the top button undone on her blouse than sit at the back next to a guy in his mid-twenties who doesn't have breasts and never will.

The bus is travelling along a windy road sheltered with trees now, light and shadow flitting through the windows across Choutarou's face. He can feel a little nervousness creeping through him, and it feels like a split second before the bus comes to a humming pause in front of the second to last bus stop along this route.

The university here isn't the one Choutarou attended, but it is one he knows well, if only because he once dated a professor here. These days, it's not the women in heels and skirts who make him nervous, but the guy who gets on with them, walking slowly towards the back of the bus and glancing at every seat left and right, as though to make sure the seat ahead of him really is the only spare seat on the bus.

He never asks Choutarou if he can sit down, never calls him 'sensei'... Probably doesn't know he's a teacher anyway, Choutarou reminds himself.

He just _sits_. Then he leans back, hands behind his head, legs spread apart comfortably in front of him, and Choutarou simply snaps his head back to stare out the window.

He usually manages to concentrate so hard on staring that he doesn't see anything, and he's missed his stop more than once because of it.

But right now, as he sits, he actually manages to take in the view outside the window.

Somewhat, anyway.

It would make a nice walk home, he thinks, but he never can quite bring himself to get off the bus at the stop before, because he knows he'll miss seeing this guy if he does.

So he sits, plastered to his seat. Except that as he watches the breeze outside, ruffling the branches of the trees, he suddenly feels it on the back of his neck. Hot in the middle of winter.

He turns his head quickly, face reddening when he instantly meets the eyes of the boy next to him, blushing because the look of nonchalance on his face is so blatant that Choutarou realises he must have been imagining it. So he turns back around, heart beating nervously in his chest even as he tries to tell himself he's being stupid.

But it happens again, and Choutarou slaps his hand to the back of his neck quickly, turning to glance at the boy again.

And _this_ time it's him who looks away first, deliberately crossing one leg over the other and staring sideways. And Choutarou wonders if that's a blush he's seeing on his cheeks.

(S)

Choutarou's stomach is twisting unexpectedly. Not because the boy has gotten on the bus today, but because he hasn't. And because Choutarou's hand is gripping the seat in front of him, body half risen up from his seat because he can't quite decide if he wants to get off or not.

The usual gaggle of women have already gotten on, but why the man isn't with them, Choutarou can't understand.

He checks his watch and glances out the window again, and as the front doors close, he stumbles up out of his seat, calling out to the driver to wait; he'll get off here today for a change, please and thank you!

Falling ungracefully out the door of the bus is probably something of an anticlimax. His ankle twisting slightly, Choutarou manages to stay upright by hanging onto the bus stop sign. He hears the boys on the bus laughing at him and shakes his head, thinking of the scolding he'd give them if he were their teacher right now.

Though when he hears the bus pulling away and looks up again, he finds himself staring at someone running hurriedly towards him, arm out and mouth open, yelling for the bus to wait, wait, _wait!_

It doesn't, of course, and the jumble of legs and arms heading towards Choutarou nearly turns into a collision, Choutarou stumbling backwards and the guy stumbling forwards, hands on Choutarou's shoulder to steady his feet and stop them.

Choutarou's back smacks against the metal pole and he winces, feeling stinging pain on his shoulder blade.

"I thought you weren't catching it today," he breathes out, before he can stop himself.

The guy steps back again, straightening his shirt and running a hand through his cropped hair. "My class finished late."

"I see..." Choutarou says. For a second, he has no idea what to say. Just stares at the scar on the boy's forehead and the diary in his hand with his name written clearly on the front.

Then he catches himself and swallows a little, trying to keep the stutter from his voice as he speaks. "I'm... I live one stop that way. Are you... walking that way too? The next bus doesn't come for an hour."

(S)

There were days, once, when Choutarou thought he'd like to be little again. He'd wished he could go back to the way things once were, when he didn't read the newspaper every day or care about anything outside of his own selfish little world. But those days, now, seem so long gone, and in their place, he finds an adult who sits at the back of the bus and instead of watching out the window at the buildings, watches out the window for the stop he'll get off at, where he meets a boy with an occasional frown who walks one stop home with him. And when Choutarou becomes too absorbed in looking at the scenery around him, catches him out with a yank on a few strands of his hair.

He never admits to it, of course, but Choutarou doesn't mind. He remembers doing it once when he was a kid on the bus. A high schooler who saw a younger middle school girl with a bandaid stuck on her forehead and a scowl on her face.

A high schooler who couldn't quite resist yanking a bit on the kid's ponytail, only to realise... he wasn't a girl at all. He was a boy whose backpack read _Shishido Ryou_.

Choutarou knows why he never quite had enough incentive to buy a car instead of taking the bus. But as he feels a hand slip into his, fingers warm even though it's winter and neither of them have gloves, he wonders if it isn't really time to do so.

After all, there are a million places he wants to go with Shishido, and only one of them happens to be along bus route number nine.


End file.
